The economy that trembles with every bullet
More than half of the cargo trucks stopped dead last Sunday. The reason? The wave of violence that followed the death of a certain individual linked to organized crime. No need to name it, we all know who the headlines are talking about.
Luis Villatoro, president of the ANERPV, confirmed it openly. “It was definitely above 50% or 60%,” he said of the shutdown. The fear was tangible. No one knew where or when the next confrontation would break out.
“The risk was latent. We did not know in what state they would manifest themselves, in what ways these illicit groups would be active.”
The hardest hit region was Jalisco and Bajío. Logistical operations were preventively stopped for two full days. A forced technical stoppage that costs the national economy millions every hour.
The most revealing thing is not the specific strike, but the distorted normality that Villatoro later described. At an event on logistics microcredentials—the irony is palpable—he dropped another brutal piece of information.
He explained that motor transportation faces violent incidents regularly. The national average is around 80%. He called it part of the “criminal policy” that is rampant on our roads.
Think about that. Eight out of ten routes have some brush with violence. That is not an anomaly, it is the system operating under new—and sinister—rules of the game.
Today, they say, everything operates at 100% again. But that figure is a mirage. 100% of a system that includes, as a standard operating cost, the constant risk of shootings and blockades.
We study law to understand the laws. But in this country, it sometimes seems like the only rules that really move the goods are the ones that write in lead.
